1517 Blogcast

The parable of the two sons whom their father sent to work in the vineyard is not a well-known parable--or one about which we hear many sermons. What does it mean? And what does it tell us about life in the church? In this article, Del Campbell explores this parable for us.

If you want to stay out of jail, look to the law. If you want into heaven, look to the promise. If you want to earn a paycheck from your boss, work. If you want to receive salvation from your God, believe.

The gospel promise is that God in Christ knows exactly what your temptations are and still bids you find protection from them in him.

Luke presents Mary to us as a model of Christian faith and discipleship. On this Festival of the Annunciation, I invite you to consider this view of the Virgin Mary for your own life of devotion and faith in Christ.

God made us to live together, to live in harmony with each other, to serve and sacrifice for the health and well-being of each other. When we hurt one part, we injure the whole body. And, as the philosopher, Marcus Aurelius, wrote, “What injures the hive, injures the bee."

When Luther's barber, Peter Beskendorf, asked him how to pray, Luther wrote him an open letter that has become a classic expression of the "when, how, and what" of prayer. It is as instructive today as when it was first penned it in 1535.

Without the influence of a 19th-century minister named George MacDonald, we may never have had classics such as The Chronicles of Narnia, The Lord of the Rings, or even Alice in Wonderland. It was George MacDonald whom C.S. Lewis claimed as his master, saying, “I have never written a book in which I did not quote from him.” So who is this MacDonald?

This petition is proof that the Christian life is not a practice in perfectionism. Rather, it is a life of dying and rising, lived under the cross of Christ, in the continual forgiveness of our sins.

The book, Paul and the Resurrection: Testing the Apostolic Testimony, by Josh Pagán, has just been released by 1517 Publishing. In this innovative, interdisciplinary study, Pagán combines the analytic tools of history and philosophy to explore and evaluate competing explanations of Paul's belief in the Resurrection of Jesus. In this article, he introduces us to his book, which is available now on Amazon (see link at close of article).

Despite the grave threat of martyrdom during his roughly thirty years of ministry, St. Patrick persevered and experienced enormous success.